Issue With Exchange 2010 emails not working due to full drive.

Hi Victor,

Exchange is not installed in virtual machine? Could you add more space?

The logs are the transactions log from database?

Regards
Valentina

Exchange is installed on a physical server. Would their be a specific error in windows server event viewer that would notify me that the issue with email flow not working is related to not having enough space on the drive?

Hi victor,

yes you should have backpressure events.

Do you have events between 15000-15020?

Regards
Valentina

Hi Valentina,

Just checked event viewer and see no sign of those events. A better way to phrase our situation is we are able to send out emails but not receive externally. How would i go about checking to see what the issue might be.  

Thanks

HI Victor,

Do you see the hard disk full without space?

Normally if you do not receive externally, A common reason it could be that you need more space.

Have you checked the events ?

Regards
Valentina

Hi Valentina,

I just checked and the only drive that is 99 percent full is the following. Dont know if that is causing the behavior I am experiencing.

E:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14

I checked event viewer in windows server 2008 and don't see any events related to 15000-15020.

Thanks

Just double checked and unless I assume exchange take its requirements on memory percentage instead of actual free space.

The C drive is 98 percent full as well.

Thanks

HI Victor,

The drive "E:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14" is the one where Exchange is installed. It need to have space.

Could you not add more space?

Regards
Valentina

The server is a physical server and is partitioned with all available space already. What would be my options? Is their no way to clear any log files from it I see alot of log files that start with  E0200A320B3.log.

Thanks

Upon further research it looks like my best bet is to run a windows server backup so it can properly delete the log files.

One thing i would want clarification is for  the purpose of purging log files does the windows server backup that i run have to be a full backup or can it be the select drives only.

Also would their be a faster way to get email flow up temporarily before I resort to doing the backup?

Thanks

Have you resolved this issue?  If your C: drive is 98% full, that may be causing memory backpressure which can cause the symptom you're describing. However, that normally would cause an event log entry, so it also might not be the cause.  Nevertheless, unless your C: drive is unusually large (over 120GB), then 98% full is not a good situation.

You should be doing regular daily (or at least weekly) full on-line backups of Exchange (meaning Exchange is running during the backups) using a VSS-capable backup software.  This is the normal way to ensure that your log files are cleared on a regular basis so that your drive doesn't get too full.

The C drive is fine now I manage to get free space on it. The issue now is with the other drive which has exchange mailbox db on it. The drive is 100 percent full. Their are a lot of log files on their that need to be cleared. I am going to run the full backup right now to properly truncate the log files. The thing is management does not want to be down a full day and my other alternative which i told them is not recommended is to delete a couple gigs worth of the E02 logs after making a copy of them. Right now the issue is I keep getting backup failed to complete on the windows server back to an external drive. The backup is 2tb and their is 3.6tb of free space on the drive. Any reason why its failing even though their is enough room?

Thanks

Because Windows backup software need to have some free space for VSS snapshot.
Without free space (around 10%) of physical disk space any backup will fail.
Is it a single drive or RAID or part of RAID volume ?

It is part of a raid. Which drive needs to have around 10 percent free space?

Thanks

Any drive.
In your case try to decrease Windows Swap File on drive C, then move something from E drive to C temporarily, then try backup E drive again.

Here is how to identify the log files which have not been committed to the database and to then delete the older ones which is safe:
https://tomjacobchirayil.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/delete-old-transaction-log-files-in-exchange-2010/

You have two more options:
1. attach external disk drive and move the location of log files there temporarily. You will get additional free space on current disk which should get your exchange server back online and give you some time to make backup in peace. Hope the external disk is healthy.
Afterwards move log file location back to original location.
2. temporary enable circular logging. It will flush log files, but it is not recommended to use circular logging in case you will need to restore exchange server from the backup. Use this option as last resort.

" Which drive needs to have around 10 percent free space?" Each drive you are doing snapshot on.

Disks are cheap - you should add good enough to avoid such issue. You may want to have at least 7 days worths of extra log space just in case.

I would advise to take the backup and run the VSS tester script to clear it as it's not recommended to have the circular login enabled

Was able to backup and clear the log files.

Thanks